“On Becoming a Wave” || On a foggy morning, waves roll into Cannon Beach, with Ecola State Park in the background, on the northern coast of Oregon, USA (Prints available – click on photo to order!)

While the idiom goes, “A picture is worth a 1000 words,” sometimes I find I have a little more to say about a place or experience than just 1000 words. Typically, those words evolve into a story, a blog, or in extreme cases, a book. More and more frequently, though, I find myself writing poems to accompany my images. Although I have composed poetry for a number of years, few people outside of my immediate family and a couple of close, trusted friends have ever read my written creations. Until now…thanks largely in part to the encouragement I’ve received from my family and friends. And because I find it becoming an important part of my creative process for self-expression.

Like creating a meaningful image, inspiration for my poems come literally from everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes a poem almost writes itself, spilling onto the pages somewhat effortlessly as thoughts about a place, experience, or situation flow freely (much like arriving at a location and everything – the light, the composition, the mood – all comes together in one magical moment to snap a photograph). More often, I get a spark of an idea – a word, a phrase, or a notion – and spend time noodling on what it means to me, how I feel about it, and what I wish to say about it (similar to the visualization process I use to make photographs). During this analytical process, I dig as deep into my soul as possible to try to first understand what’s happening inside me, without judging, and then try to pick carefully the words to help reveal those emotions in a written form.

There are times when I feel like I’m not myself when I write poetry, only to discover later the poem I develop expresses exactly who I am. It’s a difficult head space to describe…but Rollo May’s has a great quote about the process: “When you write a poem, you discover that the very necessity of fitting your meaning into such and such a form requires you to search in your imagination for new meanings. You reject certain ways of saying it; you select others, always trying to form the poem again. In your forming, you arrive at new and more profound meanings than you had even dreamed of.”

I enjoy pairing my poems and photographs together to convey a broader sense and context of the observations I deem important as I’m in the Great Outdoors. In some cases, the poem adds more meaning to the photograph. In others, the photograph helps explain the poem. A poem helps me communicate the reason why I made the photograph in the first place (in more depth than a descriptive, but short, title would). A photograph gives me an avenue to express deeper thoughts in my poems. It’s very much a “which comes first, the chicken or the egg” scenario.

With that background in mind, I thought I’d share a more recent photograph and poem pairing, one I created while wandering along “my” beloved Oregon coast this past May. Watching waves crashed into the cliffs or roll onto the beach is something I could literally do all day, so I started with visual inspiration from the sea, resulting in the photo you see above. Fog along the coast in the summer frequently occurs, which I find adds extra drama to the already beautiful scenery. To capture a more intimate view of the waves rolling onto Cannon Beach, I walked to the mouth of Ecola Creek as the tide receded and then ran with the waves and photographed them from a low, crouched perspective as they raced onto the shore. I ended up hand-holding the camera, even at the slow shutter speed of 1/4th second, as I didn’t have time to set up the tripod. With my wide-angle 24-105mm lens, I used an f/9 aperture to get just enough depth of field combined with the motion in the waves I desired.

The idea for this poem originated while I was judging the Norm Strung Youth Writing Awards for the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) around that same time frame and noted a number of entries titled, “How to Be a [Insert object or animal here]” (likely originating from one teacher’s classroom writing activities). I immediately thought about what it’d be like to be a wave, which resulted in the following poem:

“On Becoming a Wave”

Wander
Effortlessly across
The palette of blue,
Bobbing, boiling, rolling
Until the winds guide you

Thunder madly into resilient cliffs.
Explode into a bouquet of decay.
Spray seaweed confetti across the sky .
Ooze through every crack, every crevice,
Taunting each grain of sand to roll between
Your insistent caress.

Pause to remember
Where you came from.
Then as the cobble claps,
Take a bow and
Recede elegantly, flawlessly
As delicate lace.

Time to begin again.

As this is my first time sharing my poetry publicly, I certainly welcome your thoughts about my photo and poem pairing so please leave me your comments below! What do you think about it? Does anyone else out there write poems to accompany your photographs?

Search

About Me

Howdy! My name is Colleen Miniuk-Sperry and after spending 10 years stuck in a grey cubicle, I escaped Corporate America in 2007 and have been a full-time freelance photographer, writer, instructor, and speaker under the "CMS Photography" business name ever since. I specialize in nature, travel and outdoor recreation photography and writings. Besides being incredibly passionate (obsessed?) with photography and writing, I'm fluent in sarcasm, love French Chardonnay (though I don't discriminate against any type of wine), and much prefer dark, moody cloudy skies to clear blue ones. To read a full bio and to learn more about my work, please visit my main CMS Photography website at: www.cms-photo.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Meta

About the Author

Colleen Miniuk-Sperry fled the grey cubicle walls and left her unfulfilling software engineering job behind at Intel Corporation in 2007 to pursue a more meaningful life as a full-time outdoor photographer, writer, publisher, instructor, and speaker. Her credits include National Geographic calendars, Arizona Highways, AAA Via, National Parks Traveler, On Landscape, and a broad variety of other publications. She has served three times as an Artist-in-Residence with Acadia National Park.

She authored the award-winning guidebooks, Photographing Acadia National Park: The Essential Guide to When, Where, and How and Wild in Arizona: Photographing Arizona’s Wildflowers, A Guide to When, Where, & How (1st and 2nd editions) as well as the instructional eBook, Seeing the Light in Outdoor Photography.

Colleen offers highly-acclaimed photography workshops and women’s photography retreats (called “Sheography™”) through her own company, CMS Photography, as well as Arizona Highways Photography Workshops, Arizona Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, and numerous private engagements in the past. She also provides inspirational and educational presentations at photography clubs, conferences, and symposiums, as well at art clubs and outdoor-related organizations across the country.

Colleen is an active member, Secretary on the Board of Directors for Outdoor Writers Association of America, where she served as the interim Executive Director in 2017.